Re: Package maintainer script policy.

[miquels@cistron.nl (Miquel van Smoorenburg)]

In article <[🔎] 87hfzsv7nj.fsf@tiamat.datasync.com>,
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> wrote:
>	See? $nosuch and "$nosuch" are not the same thing. Never have
> been. To drive the point home, try this little shell function that
> reports the number of positional arguments and the values.

Yes, well, but the rules are different for normal variables and $@.
Now if you were talking about $* you would be right.

$ bash -c '[ "$@" = whatever ]'
bash: [: =: unary operator expected

See? ;)

So
	exec program "$@"

is indeed _the_ preferred way to pass arguments unchanged, but you really
have to understand the very subtle differences between $* and $@.

Another one:

$ bash -c 'set 1 2 3; set "$*"; echo $#'
1
$ bash -c 'set 1 2 3; set "$@"; echo $#'
3

See? "$@" expands to _three_ strings. Cool, huh?

Mike.
-- 
 Miquel van Smoorenburg | Our vision is to speed up time,
    miquels@cistron.nl  |   eventually eliminating it.     <*>


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